Twodeefont

Real-Time Lettering on 3D Signs with a 2D Font Engine

Standard texturing shows a number of problems with 3D objects such as road signs,
labels, or books. If letters are displayed at too large a scale, textures show blurred
instead of hard edges; if letters are displayed at tiny sizes, textures appear either
too pixelated or too blurry, but seldom well readable.

In 2D as opposed to 3D, letters are created on demand in the required size
by a sophisticated font rendering engine, a standard component of todays operating
systems. A number of specific improvements such as hinting and RGB subpixel rendering
are available. Our work demonstrates how these partially proprietary and patented
2D functions can be leveraged for 3D rendering.

The price to pay is a loss in geometric precision, since typical 2D font rendering
engines only handle affine transformations, which can merely approximate perspective
projection. However, in most situations this is outweighed easily by the gain in
clarity.